North Korea

THE ORIGINS OF THE KOREAN NATION

Koreans inhabit a mountainous peninsula protruding southward
from the northeastern corner of the Asian continent and
surrounded on three sides by water
(see fig. 1
, frontispiece;
The Physical Environment
, ch. 2). Although Japan exercised decisive
influence by the late sixteenth century, in ancient times the
peoples and civilizations on the contiguous Asian continent were
far more important. The peninsula is surrounded on three sides by
other peoples: Chinese to the west; Japanese to the east; and an
assortment of peoples to the north, including "barbarian" tribes,
aggressive invaders, and, in the twentieth century, an expanding
and deepening Russian presence. Koreans have emerged as a people
influenced by the peninsula's internal and surrounding geography.

The northern border between Korea and China formed by the
Yalu and Tumen rivers has been recognized for centuries. But
these rivers did not always constitute Korea's northern limits;
Koreans ranged far beyond this border well into northeastern
China and Siberia, and neither Koreans nor the ancient tribes
that occupied the plains of Manchuria (northeastern China)
considered these riverine borders to be sacrosanct. The harsh
winter climate also turned the rivers into frozen pathways for
many months, facilitating the back-and-forth migration out of
which the Korean people were formed.

Paleolithic excavations show that humans inhabited the Korean
Peninsula half a million years ago, but most scholars assume that
present-day Koreans are not descended from these early
inhabitants. Neolithic age (from 4,000-3,000 B.C.) humans also
inhabited the area, identified archaeologically by the ground and
polished stone tools and pottery they left to posterity. Around
2,000 B.C., a new pottery culture spread into Korea from China.
These people practiced agriculture in a settled communal life,
and are widely supposed to have had consanguineous clans as their
basic social grouping. Korean historians in modern times
sometimes assume that the clan leadership systems characterized
by councils of nobles (hwabaek) that emerged in the
subsequent Silla period can be traced back to these neolithic
peoples, and that a mythical "child of the sn," an
original Korean, also was born then. There is no hard evidence,
however, to support such beginnings for the Korean people.

By the fourth century B.C., a number of walled-town states on
the peninsula had survived long enough to come to the attention
of China. The most illustrious of these states was Old Chosn,
which had established itself along the banks of the Liao and the
Taedong rivers in southern Manchuria and northwestern Korea. Old
Chosn prospered as a civilization based on bronze culture and a
political federation of many walled towns; the federation,
judging from Chinese accounts, was formidable to the point of
arrogance. Riding horses and deploying bronze weapons, the Chosn
people extended their influence to the north, taking most of the
Liaodong Basin. But the rising power of the north China state of
Yen (1122-255 B.C.) checked Chosn's growth and eventually pushed
it back to territory south of the Ch'ngch'n River, located
midway between the Yalu and Taedong rivers. As the Yen gave way
in China to the Qin (221-207 B.C.) and the Han dynasties (206
B.C.-A.D. 220), Chosn declined, and refugee populations migrated
eastward. Out of this milieu, emerged Wiman, a man who assumed
the kingship of Chosn sometime between 194 and 180 B.C. The
Kingdom of Wiman Chosn melded Chinese influence, and under the
Old Chosn federated structure--apparently reinvigorated under
Wiman--the state again expanded over hundreds of kilometers of
territory. Its ambitions ran up against a Han invasion, however,
and Wiman Chosn fell in 108 B.C.

These developments coincided with the beginnings of iron
culture, enabling the rise of a sophisticated agriculture based
on implements such as hoes, plowshares, and sickles. Cultivation
of rice and other grains increased markedly. Although the peoples
of the peninsula could not yet be called "Korean," there was an
unquestioned continuity in agrarian society from this time until
the emergence of a unified Korean state many centuries later.

Han Chinese built four commanderies, or local military units,
to rule the peninsula as far south as the Han River, with a core
area at Lolang (Nangnang in Korean), near present-day P'yongyang.
It is illustrative of the relentlessly different historiography
practiced in North Korea and South Korea, as well as the
projection backward of Korean nationalism practiced by both
sides, that North Korean historians deny that the Lolang
Commandery was centered in Korea. They place it northwest of the
peninsula, possibly near Beijing, in order to de-emphasize
China's influence on ancient Korean history. They perhaps do so
because Lolang was clearly a Chinese city, as attested by the
many burial objects showing the affluent lives of Chinese
overlords and merchants.